


where the story ends

by forcynics



Series: vampire diaries ficathon fills [4]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Future Fic, Grieving, Multi, References to other character death, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-10
Updated: 2011-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-24 02:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6138850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damon doesn’t recognize the number – it’s been years and her number’s changed as often as her location – but he recognizes the voice that answers his “Hello?” with a quiet “Do you ever think about going back?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	where the story ends

 

 

 

**nine**

A tangle of limbs, varying shades of pale, amidst tousled sheets. Blonde locks, brown waves, black curls. The sun is rising slowly, light tip-toeing into the room to reveal the events of the previous night. A soft head lying on a chest, another curled into the crook of a neck. Fingers interlaced, three bodies shifting in their sleep, the sounds of breathing. The sheets have all but slid off them but there are no fumbling half-awake attempts to pull them back.

They have nothing to hide.

  
  
  
  
  


**six**

Damon doesn’t recognize the number – it’s been years and her number’s changed as often as her location – but he recognizes the voice that answers his “Hello?” with a quiet “Do you ever think about going back?”

They’ve both spent the past almost-five years moving from city to city to city and yet he knows exactly what ‘back’ Caroline’s talking about. There really only is one.

He sits down slowly on the bed, the unexpected weight of the conversation pushing him down.

“Yeah.”

She would call him a liar if he said anything else. But she doesn’t speak, not for a long moment, and he’s just holding the phone to his ear and sitting there alone. He didn’t feel alone before he heard her voice again, and her seven words.

She takes the total up to nine: “Me too.”

And that seals it.

  
  
  
  
  


**two**

This town has seen too much. Elena sits on the swing in an empty playground, swings faster and faster as if she can fly away from it all.

If she flies fast enough, maybe she can go back and fix things. Maybe she could go back and tell her aunt to run away, far, far away, and then she’d never have had to come home and find Jenna’s dead body – Katherine decided to make her warning more clear. Maybe she could go back and grab Bonnie by the shoulders, shake her out of her trance before she attempted a spell that would take more out of her than she had to give – everything.

Katherine is dead now, but at what cost?

The vampire took Jeremy and Alaric with her too, their fingers cut off first.

The cost is more than she ever wanted to risk.

She’s going to college, trying to find some way back into normal, some hidden route that probably doesn’t exist. She leaves tomorrow and there’s no one to say goodbye to. They’re already gone.

She’s still swinging but tears are pouring down her cheeks.

  
  
  
  
  


**five**

There is too much sadness in the world. Caroline remembers when it used to be a happy place, when she was a little girl drawing pictures of rainbows and princesses. She drew herself into her pictures, happy landscapes where she’d be riding a white horse or dressed in a ball gown.

She never drew herself dragging a guy into a parking lot, shaking and wanting nothing more than to rip him apart. Not even just for the blood, simply because he’s so _breakable_ , everything is so breakable and no one realizes. She wants to scream until they realize, but they wouldn’t and she wouldn’t blame them. They haven’t seen the sadness she’s seen. They can’t imagine the anger that she feels so often. _It was so unfair_.

This guy’s eyes are dull, blank even, from compulsion but she suddenly doesn’t know why she even bothered. She wants to hear him scream.

It’s easier to turn everything off.

But she still remembers crying in the bathroom, blood smeared all over her face, and the promise that everything was going to be okay, that she could get through this.

“Go home,” she whispers, and he obliges.

  
  
  
  
  


**three**

Damon leaves. He’s lost too much in that one town.

Caroline comes with him, and for a while they travel together, and everything is a blur of alcohol and crowds of people in which she still managed to stand out. They both stand out. They’re so much more than everyone else, so much more than human, and no one even has a clue.

Inevitably, he leaves her too. She never calls, never comes after him. If he hadn’t left, she would have. It wasn’t any easier to be around each other than it was to be in that town.

Some things bring people together; some things tear them apart.

They’ve all been torn apart too many times to count.

  
  
  
  
  


**seven**

Everything looks the same. It shouldn’t.

Elena finds them inside; she finds them in silence. There’s an open bottle of Scotch on the table and they’re both holding glasses but neither one is drinking. She walks into the room as if she had every intention of being here today, as if her crawling out of hiding is no surprise.

To be honest, it’s really not.

A glass of Scotch poured with shaking hands, then she perches on the arm of the couch, stares out the window.

“You came.”

Caroline doesn’t look a day older than she did five years ago. Neither of them do.

 _She_ looks older. Feels older too.

"Five years,” she says quietly, raising her glass out towards them.

Three clinks.

“Five years,” they echo.

Where has all the time gone? Sometimes it passes too slowly, sometimes too quickly. Right now she sits in silence and time doesn’t really matter at all.

  
  
  
  
  


**four**

Caroline calls her once, a year later – ‘Anniversary’ doesn’t sound right.

Nervously dials the cell-phone number she’s still got memorized and hopes that it hasn’t changed since Elena went off to college, escaping back into mundane world. As if escape was actually possible. She can’t blame her; they all tried.

There’s no answer and she wonders if it’s just ‘cause she’s calling from an unfamiliar number – she changes numbers constantly, everywhere she goes. It’s her own way of trying to escape.

“It’s me,” she says nervously after the beep. “I just wanted to... I just wanted to talk.” Pause. “I miss you.” She whispers it so quietly she doesn’t know if it will be audible or not.

In any case, she never gets a call back.

  
  
  
  
  


**eight**

The world is a better place when it’s viewed through layers and layers of Scotch, Damon decided a long time ago.

Not as good as it once was, five years ago, but as close as it can get now. He doesn’t know how much he’s had to drink, doesn’t care. He’s only aware of the two bodies slumped into him on the couch. Who would have guessed? Who could have forseen they’d be the last three standing?

There’s a mumble at his right, a stirring, then a familiar mouth on his. He should be surprised a moment later by the second kiss, on his cheek, Elena's lips trailing down his jaw.

He’s not.

After that, it’s just the shedding of clothes and the abandon of any predetermined concepts of right or wrong in favour of what they all know they feel but no one says.

Screw the rest of the world, he manages to think bitterly. All he needs is what he has right here.

And he does need them.

  
  
  
  
  


**one**

There was a hidden fact in the back of everyone’s minds: Elena was going to die first.

There was a way to prevent that, but it wasn’t something she was ever ready to think about, merely something to push to back of their minds for a rainy day.

Facts aren’t supposed to lie.

Stefan wasn’t supposed to die.

It’s the opposite of the way it was supposed to happen. He might have tried to prepare himself to deal with the knowledge that one day he would lose her, but she’s never needed to imagine that she could lose him. There could be a world with him and not her, but a world with her and not him?

It isn’t supposed to be like this.

She doesn’t just cry; she crumples.

She might as well have died too, she thinks at her lowest moments.

Everything is a low moment.

  
  
  
  
  


**ten**

They wake up slowly, waking each other up as they finally start to move and shift. It should feel like everything has changed in one night, but instead they pull on spare articles of clothing with ease, head downstairs in silence.

There’s coffee soon enough, a group effort that results in the three of them sitting on the couch, bodies touching absentmindedly. Blood replaces coffee for two of them, and they still sit there and sip. A head leaned against a shoulder, legs overlapping.

They don’t say it but none of them ever managed to find such a comfortable moment in the past five years.

 

 

 


End file.
